Your personal favorite open-world maps in video games of all time? (As of September 16, 2022)

Dear gamers in the Giant Bomb forums

My personal favorites of all time are (In-particular order):

1. Southern Europe (Forza Horizon 2)
2. UK (Forza Horizon 4)
3. Whole Europe (Europe Truck Simulator 2)
4. Ibiza & Hawaii (Test Drive Unlimited series)
5. Colorado, USA (Forza Horizon)
6. Whole USA country (The Crew series)
7. Western United States (American Truck Simulator)
8. Queensland and Nothern Territory, Australia (Forza Horizon 3)
9. Mexico (Forza Horizon 5)
10. Blizzard Mountain (Forza Horizon 3 Expansion)
11. Storm Island (Forza Horizon 2 Expansion)
12. Lego map (Forza Horizon 4 Expansion)
13. Hot Wheels maps (Forza Horizon 3 & 5 Expansion)
14. Tokyo, Japan (Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix)
15. San Francisco (Driver: San Francisco)
16. Vice City/Miami (Grand Theft Auto Vice City)

Call me basic, but man I love exploring Skyrim. I like the personality of each hold, and the devs did a really good job curating viewpoints.

I’m also partial to Fallout 3 since I used to live in DC. I could find the approximate location of my apartment building (or rather, its ruins), and I appreciate that.

Outer Wilds solar system

The ultimate gift of Red Dead 2 has been following its various photographers and wild life documented on subreddit. Truly insane fake world.

Nominating that, or fellow contemporaries like Tsushima or GTA V, feels too easy though because of course they’re great. They’re standing on the shoulders of giants, crafted by those very same giants.

So: Shadow of the Colossus would be my legacy pick, whose only real influence I can point to might be Elden Ring, sadly.

skyrim is certainly the first open world that knocked me on my bum with the scale and majesty of its world. that's a good choice, and probably the open world that had the biggest initial impact on me.

however i think i'd actually pick Horizon Zero Dawn- ugly colors notwithstanding. *cough*

i have a proclivity for environments where nature is reclaiming the space- so the combo of that aesthetic, the goregeous art, a juxtaposition of preserved high tech with rotted out skyscrapers- it all served to put me in a mental space of, "just what the HELL happened here?" which i think is exactly what they were going for.

I have the art book for Cyberpunk 2077, so it's fair to assume that I like Night City's art direction, so I guess that's my number one pick, plus the roughly 400 hours that I've spent in the game. Also spending roughly 400 hours in this game: GTA Online has helped me appreciate San Andreas more than when the game originally launched, so that's my number two. And to round out the top three, it's a tossup between Fallout 4 and Fallout 76: 76 having more biomes than 4's base game and the New River Gorge Bridge, but 4 having Far Harbor, Nuka World and Nexus Mods having more maps to try out, including Fallout 3 thanks to the Capital Wasteland team.

Gravity Rush 2. One of the most luscious, comfy and fun worlds to explore through. Falling through the skies, drifting on building, discovering hidden treasures. Doing other player's challenges. That game was such a criminally underrated gem.

Breath of the Wild would be mine. It was the first one that really motivated me to explore everything. From the set pieces, villages and stables, and shrines, it made exploring that map a lot of fun.

GTA V is also great for what it is. I'm always amazed at the amount of detail in that game.

I second that opinion about Gravity Rush 2, especially when you take time out from playing the main story to explore and collect a lot of gems on roof tops and below the cities in the world to spend later for items.

But this is a hard one for me, as I like pretty much all of them for some reason or another. I'll go old school and say Final Fantasy IV because it was the first time experiencing an world map in an JRPG and the different locations you go to later in the game. The Giant Whale ship summon event to go to the Moon is still one of the most epic moments in video games for me, along with the Mode 7 cutscene that happens when you travel from the Earth to the Moon and the epic theme music that plays when you're aboard the ship.

Another one I'll say is GTA: San Andreas because of the size and scale of the world map and how it highlighted how huge California really is as a state. It could literally be its own country. And this is one of the many reason that game is considered the best in the series.

Mad Max. The car throttling over the apocalyptic wasteland, looking for pockets of (in)humanity, among a multicolour expanse of nothingness. Eerie and soothing all at once.

I guess you're referring to Avalanche Studios' Mad Max 2015 game, I enjoyed this game on my PC a lot and my personal favorite car is the Ford Falcon XB V8 Interceptor.

I also loved driving the Ford Falcon XB in the Forza Horizon series as well.

Shadow of the Colossus and Elden Ring are both at the top of my list for very different reasons.

Kamurocho.

Goes to show you don’t need a huge number like “400 square miles” or whatever to have a fun, interesting, dense open world.

@virtuacat: You know, Kamurocho is not my favorite, but I would give it a special mention because the degree to which I know that place by now is pretty astounding.

I could give someone better directions to a ramen place in Kamurocho more accurately than I could direct someone around the town I've lived my whole life.

I have to give it to Oblivion, it's obviously aged now but when i first played it it was like nothing else, runner up goes to The Witcher 3, it feels like a real tangible place and the insane amount of scripting of NPC's fills out the world like no other game i've played.

My real half joking winner is Flight Simulator for rendering the entire planet, it is impossible to see everything in that game within a lifetime.